SET-BC Region 2 District Partners’ Day

January 18, 2011

On January 18th, the lower mainland SET-BC consultants hosted their annual “District Partner Day.” SET-BC District Partners are BC educators who work in collaboration with SET-BC to support acceptance of new students, planning of assistive technology (AT) training, and implementation of technology loaned to students in BC school districts.

SET-BC Provincial Coordinator Kerry Randle opened the day with an update on SET-BC, as well as sharing the focus and objectives for the year: improved AT implementation through student activity days, coaching techniques, and an implementation based service delivery model.

Members of the SET-BC Provincial Resource Team offered information on new student resources that can be found in curriculumSET on our SET-BC website, and updated information on the Service Delivery Process.

Boardmaker Studio was highlighted as a new AT software program that is now available for teams to consider when selecting an AT solution for their students.

A variety of consultants shared student success stories from their districts, and several SET-BC technology projects were highlighted to the group.

Alan Jones and John Maschak from Apple Education Canada joined the group in the afternoon to talk about use of the iPad in Special Education. The group learned about accessibility features, new app’s, and got some hands on time with the devices.

Cindi Johnston from Bridges Canada arrived soon afterwards with a great display of “What’s New” in their catalogue of assistive technology. During this session, the district partners were able to put their hands on some of the newest in augmentative communication, literacy and numeracy assistive technologies.

Finally, new loan bank technologies (in particular, Vision technologies such as hand held magnifiers and portable room viewers) were shared with the group.

SET-BC thanks all of their district partners for their valuable contributions to our program!